托福口语 Task 3

In behavioral economics, the concept of 'anchoring' refers to the tendency for individuals to rely too heavily on an initial piece of information (the 'anchor') when making decisions. Even if the anchor is arbitrary or irrelevant, it can disproportionately influence subsequent judgments. For example, when asked to estimate the price of an item, people may start from a suggested price and adjust insufficiently, leading to biased estimates. Anchoring is a robust cognitive bias that affects decisions in pricing, negotiation, and even legal judgments.

Professor: Let me illustrate anchoring with a real experiment I conducted with my students. I showed them a bottle of wine and told half of them it cost $30, and the other half that it cost $60. Then I asked each group to bid on the wine in an auction. The group that heard $30 bid on average $25, while the group that heard $60 bid on average $45. The actual retail price of the wine was $35. So, the initial price I mentioned served as an anchor. Even though I told them it was just a suggestion, those who heard $60 adjusted downward but still stayed higher than those anchored at $30. Both groups moved toward the anchor and didn't adjust enough to the true value. This shows how anchoring skews our decisions.